I finally gave in again and upgraded Virtual PC to version 3, because I will soon have a need to run Windows-only software and my NT Workstation is a huge mess that I don't want to touch. So I went to the Connectix web site and read up a bit on the new features, the important one for me is the shared ip and improved networking. Previous versions of Virtual PC had to have their own IP address and you couldn't have the Mac OS and the PC OS accessing the network at the same time.

There is still no Windows NT version, only Windows 2000 which I don't want to learn and it's expensive to boot. Basically I didn't want to go through the process of installing version 1 then upgrading to version 3, but that turned out to be a lot easier than I thought. So I bought the upgrade and downloaded the installer, not being a patient enough person to wait for it to be shipped to me.

First thing was to install version 1, which went off smoothly. It doesn't work with Mac OS 9 so I couldn't run it, and before I had to enter the registration code which meant running the program. But version 3 just checks to see if a previous version is installed, then it installs a fresh application minus the Windows drive. You move the Windows drive to the new folder and start it up, then run a couple of updater programs and you're done. It wasn't quite that simple, but easier than I had thought.

The speed is not any worse. Downloading files is about as fast as a real PC, actually running applications is not too bad but very slow. But I expected that. A nice surprise is that the Mac/PC integration is finally working as advertised. After three versions of Virtual PC, I can now copy and paste between the Mac and PC environments. I can also drag and drop files between the Mac desktop and the PC desktop. Little features that I could get around without, but that make life a bit easier.

Virtual PC still interacts in funny ways with the Mac OS. When I launch Windows 95 the mouse speed doubles in both environments, so I have to halve the speed in the mouse control panel. Is there no way to change the mouse speed under Windows? Also, when Virtual PC is the foreground application SoundApp doesn't go to the next song on the playlist, so I have to click out for a second or two to get the next song to start. Switching to another application via the Mac OS application toolbar (my favorite method) takes a few seconds, although clicking on another application window switches at normal speed.

One of new features are configuration sets. Each configuration set is one setting of the preferences, so you can have different sets that use different hard drive images. Perfect for having multiple operating systems (although you can only have one running at a time -- not that you'd want two resource hogging programs running at once). Another new feature is AppleScript support. Haven't looked into that but it looks like you can use AppleScript to launch apps as well as simulate keystrokes and mouse actions. Don't know if you can get info back.

Incompatibilities. After a day of usage I've only found that it interferes with the NetBIOS control panel of DAVE. So I can't mount a Windows share on my Mac while Virtual PC is running. Also I can't get Netscape on Windows to work with a proxy server -- I have to use a direct connection which means it goes through the wireless connection at work. But I'm not going to be testing outside of our internal network so that's not too bad.

Virtual PC is a cool piece of software. It's just amazing that you can emulate a whole other PC in software at a speed that is anywhere faster than glacial. I hate having to deal with Windows, but it would be worse to deal with it on another computer rather than on my PowerBook. And I get to play FreeCell again.